Erica

glad that this is settled now. thanks for making cohost!

if you're going to make a joke, please make sure it won't get someone killed. as always, we reserve the right to determine what "funny" is

/me turns the page on the calendar to 1984 u_u

I'm kidding, keep up the good work c:

hey, thank you for the TOS update! i know things like this take a lot of time and energy so i want yall to know that i appreciate what went into these updates.

i have a clarifying question to ask: under the new changes about suicide baiting, what do you mean by "in a documentary capacity"? is that just meant to distinguish from users on cohost directly suicide baiting others (which i assume is TOS)?

"we're going to continue to ban sexually explicit visual media which appears to depict human minors, based on the feedback we received, as this is the area where harm is most likely.

we will allow written media (with some restrictions) and visual content which does not appear to depict humans, as the direct, real-world harm caused by these depictions is less likely."

I'd really like more information on how this was determined, what did staff base the decision on that one type is likely to be more harmful than another?

I'm grateful that Cohost has some leniency around genres like cub, but I am thinking the restriction of lolisho is unfortunate and some of the language in the terms contradicts itself with regards to upload guidelines. I will write more on this later, but for now I am liking the way the wind is blowing.

thank you very much for the update! silencing this post now because if i don't i'm going to check it every hour to see people's opinions and that wasn't healthy for me back when 18+ content depicting minors was a discourse topic the first time.

given my own experiences this level of allowance squicks me out a bit and i definitely worry you're creating a massive moderation headache for yourselves but i think i can somewhat understand how you arrived here at least even if i disagree with it. still gonna need to think about some things

Hey, thank you for reaching some clarity on this! We've been waiting a while and I'm glad to see that you understand the implications of going too far with censorship. This seems like a happy medium, but there's one point I'd like to ask about: for non-realistic depictions of human minors, that content cannot be posted here. Is it acceptable to post SFW cropped previews and links to that kind of content? In other words, will you be enforcing off-platform behaviour?

I would suggest expanding on what is or isn't considered "documentary" (more detail here if desired)

Good stuff. I know this is hard work, thank you for it.

Seems fair enough I guess. I know a lot of people are going to extrapolate from this some really awful accusations and implications and I'm really sorry you're going to have to deal with that. There really doesn't seem to be a good practical approach that won't have downsides and is actually feasible to enforce effectively.

I'll definitely be silencing the tags for that stuff. And I'll block the people who post it. But yeah I can't really expect y'all to be actively on top of every single edge case there with all the work on your plate when a lot of it is just gross and not directly harmful to a person

Thanks for doing all this hard work of writing clear and nuanced policy, and the upcoming hard work of explaining and clarifying policies to people, and the ongoing hard work of actually enforcing these policies. Running a site this big is an incredible challenge and I appreciate the thoughtful effort you folks are clearly putting in here.

Some suggested or, ideally, mandated wording for mandatory content warnings would be extremely useful to use with the CW silencing function for users (myself included) who never want to see particular things on here, even with a warning.

I am not really comfortable with the rules as they are; I can understand how the decision was reached, (adding following clause with edit) but I really don't think being permissive in this specific case is the right direction for the site, or the best course of action to ensure user safety.

I am curious about the industry professionals who were consulted and the sort of external review these guidelines have undergone.

Love to see rules like this made explicit while still allowing for the reality that a lot of cases are going to need to be determined by human beings acting in good faith. Thanks for putting in the work.

Hi. I just want to put it on the record that my criticisms of the Cohost IP license/policy which I posted along with the November terms update remain standing/unaddressed (expected because those are in the terms of service and this month's changes are to the community guidelines only). I acknowledge this is reasonably of lower priority than the community guidelines related issues you focused on in this update, and I have no desire to start a flamewar or nothin. However I do think this is (particularly in the long term) important and I would still like to see this addressed at some point. I have been writing an in-progress post on this subject in hopes it will state my criticism of the IP policy more clearly; I will probably post this in the next week or so (and/or send to your support address).

I appreciate this update. On the whole, these seem like very reasonable standards that balance the competing goals of allowing free expression, especially with regards to explicit media, while reducing direct harm as much as is feasible. I don't think I would have drawn the lines exactly the same way you did, but I think your lines are understandable and acceptable.

I am not thrilled with such a loose, judgement-based approach to erotic content removal, and would personally prefer for there to be some explanation of how you will determine whether a given image falls afoul of these rules, particularly with regards to non-realistic visual art. As I'm sure you're aware, the opinions of "reasonable people" vary widely on this type of issue, and most people feel that their position is the only reasonable one.

You will necessarily need to either come up with more specific (potentially secret) rules as reports come in, or else make somewhat arbitrary ad hoc moderator decisions for each report, resulting in an inconsistent and frustrating process for both erotic artists and good-faith reporters of potentially infringing content. I was hoping you would have created a clear, robust policy here, rather than leaving it to either of those scenarios.

Thank you for the update. Whilst some of these decisions were hard (and some here clearly disagree), I find that it strikes a healthy balance in a way that allows media posted in a capacity which some may found cathartic or empowering, whilst restricting other content which bares higher risk of causing harm.

I won't elaborate as to what, for privacy and safety reasons, but as someone who has experienced trauma that didn't involve the use of fictional media, I have found catharsis in media related to my particular trauma, generally speaking. For those similar to myself, media which seeks to explore their trauma in a fictional setting can provide a sense of catharsis, allowing them to "retake control" through fantasy.

For those who have experienced trauma that involves fictional media, whatever the content may be therein, it may be difficult to understand this point of view. For them, their trauma started with media, and therefore it can never end by it. As a result, it may be difficult to accept the existence of such content, in any capacity, as uplifting or empowering.

But this is why content warnings exist. And why I think Cohost's official stance on certain forms of media in particular is that they are allowed conditionally with such warnings applied.

And why I thank Cohost for taking the time to properly implement rules as opposed to taking the easier yet more destructive "way out" to content guidelines, whether or not it affects those in @staff.

The more I think about this tighter the knot in my stomach has grown and the more uncomfortable I am with the line having been drawn where it is, and in the fashion that it has been drawn. I don't see what people banning sexual depictions of underage humans helps that explicitly allowing sexual depictions of underage furries doesn't harm just as much.

Other than lightening the moderation workload somewhat I don't see any benefit to this at all. I am not comfortable sharing the site with people who post or consume this material. Even if the intent is solely out of allowing traumatized people to publicly share art that helps them with trauma, you are still going to get people who come here specifically to post and enjoy the closest thing to child pornography they are legally able to get, sourced from a website that explicitly allows children to join it, because it is impossible to differentiate between the two. Even with the most robust possible filtering tools in place this is not a situation that seems tenable or safe.

Even if this were a decision only made to lighten moderation workflow (for instance, avoiding debate on which Pokemon count as "children") an understanding that some of this is allowed is going to expose your moderators to a great deal more depictions of sexualized underage characters than a blanket ban would. A general understanding that those things are not allowed would mean that for the most part, people wouldn't post things that would need a decision.

I am deeply uncomfortable with the fact that I have essentially just been told the rules will be loosened (by defining them explicitly and with a carveout) and that I will be sharing a website with that class of people, after months of a general understanding that no content sexualizing underage characters is to be posted.

It is a minor point in comparison, but the point I made when this first came up stands: if Cohost allows this it is going to become known not as Cohost, a generally nice blogging website, but as Cohost, the site that allows cub, both by people repulsed by the idea and people who are looking for a website to only share this material on. A cursory Twitter search shows the beginnings of this. I don't want to be the person telling people to go to the cub website; Inkbunny, the major furry gallery platform that allows this and isn't an imageboard, is generally known as "the website for pedophiles." I'm already fucking getting messages about this on other platforms. Twitter has been able to tolerate being a universally permissive platform because it is (or was) a global platform with many millions of users. Cohost is neither.

Allowing this material is a message to people who haven't been posting it that they are now allowed to post it, and message to people who thought that the website didn't host material attractive to those people, and who do not feel safe around those people, that they are no longer safe.

If I had known this is how things would wind up around the time of the original debacle I would have folded up my presence here instead of telling people to come here. I do not want to promote a website that hosts this material, I do not want to tell people to follow me on a website that hosts this material, and I do not want to be present on a website that hosts this material.

And yet, with the benefit of 8 months of forming community and meeting people on here, I am now too embedded to leave as easily as I could have then. I feel like I've been tricked. Please reconsider this.

just to add my voice to this: allowing cub content sucks and i hate it

Umm, EXCUSE ME? You're going to allow CUB content? Are you absolutely out of your minds? What could have made you think this was even a good idea to consider?
I am extremely concerned about such a decision with massive implications on ONE DAY notice without any input from users at all and barely notifying us at all?
This is horrific, and I beg you to reconsider immediately before you become known as a site that allows it.

hey the fact that you're allowing any underage sexual content is bad and i'm leaving the site over it. rip those months of cohost plus i guess.

Seems like trying to find a bright line of allowable/not allowable for legal-but-questionable underage content that isn't easily weaponized to attack queer people or just Posters I Don't Like, which... seems reasonable to me given that that's literally the main line of attack against queer and trans people in the west currently.

Don't really have any specific points to add, but I do want to say flat-out that all this sounds good and makes sense to me.

Actually ok, one particular point. The idea of mandatory CW and tag-use for content that isn't illegal but creeps out a lot of the user base is probably the best protocol I've seen for that kind of thing.

Also probably pretty important to note that this is one of those polarized subjects where one side of it is pretty highly likely to have extremely negative reactions just to having to talk about it, and the opposite side that has no problem with it is just fine with talking about it, submitting input, and so on.

Unless you specifically sought out feedback from people who would be negatively affected by this you are necessarily going to hear more from a higher percentage of the people who would prefer to be able to post it. I know for a fact that there are group chats for people to share this stuff with whatever reasoning, and guide each other toward this place; there aren't really any such things for people who can't tolerate being around that first group.

This is a situation where deciding to allow something is going to harm others, but not deciding to allow it isn't going to inflict any further harm on people who might have wanted to post it. The arithmetic of it doesn't seem to make any sense.

Edit: it's one sizable group of people saying "hey it personally affects me in a way ranging from discomfort to actual harm to welcome that other group on the site" vs. "no it doesn't."

Adding to the other comments that I really, really don't like the idea of any kind of underage content of that sort on the site. I understand how you got to that conclusion but I strongly disagree. If this remains, I'm leaving. Thanks.

This really ain't it... I came here because it felt safe and inviting. After how things were handled last week I cancelled my plus subscription. Allowing cub now makes me question even sticking around. Cohost has so much potential, please don't let cub be the thing that destroys it.

fwiw I'm very much NOT into cub and actively avoid & choose not to engage with it, and this writeup seems good to me. block and mute the tags/users you don't want to see; simple as that

i've given myself some time to dwell on this, as well as to read some of the discussions made in the comments here.

this strange "its ok but only sometimes maybe" (???) solution to CSAM, on top of the recent questionable moderation decisions lately, makes me want to reconsider my presence on this website.

i strongly believe p*dos are not a community we should cater to. ever. full stop. i would not consider this platform safe for anyone if this really is the decision you're moving forward with. and that's really heart-wrenching for me, because i've told countless numbers of people that this has been the place to go.

that said, the fact that this post quite literally ends with "none of these rules are set in stone forever", and that the people in charge tend to respond quickly to these sorts issues with putting things right does give me a shred of hope... but the sudden frequency of moderation issues like this is really quite worrying.

i guess we'll see what happens.

Good updates, I appreciate the clear thought that was put into this and the lines drawn. Keep doin good work

due to the statement on allowing cub I am removing my cohost plus subscription. I can't directly support a website that chooses to allow cub art.

I see the justifications for why this is okay below and even so I cannot say I feel safe on a site like this that allows cub. Please reconsider this.

Frankly, I'm not super comfortable with the decisions in these guidelines, but I'm torn, because I do understand that the way people process is complex, and while I personally find cub content repugnant, I also acknowledge that there is a major difference between actual CSAM and drawn or written materials, and we don't want to lump something like Nabokov's Lolita or a personal anecdote of someone's own experiences in with lolisho. I think I'd feel better with a mandatory content warning that would be easy to blacklist and never ever have to see.

I do not like the idea of any material depicting underage characters in sexual situations being tolerated, at all. Even if it's furry art or whatever. This decision sucks and I cannot for the life of me understand the reasoning behind it.

I ask you respectfully to please either reconsider or at the very minimum explain in detail what the thought behind this is. I just don't believe "it's not as realistic so it's less likely to cause harm" is enough OR the full picture.

Please.

not much that hasn't already been more eloquently put in this comment section regarding the frankly baffling allowance of cub on here, but i'm joining the group of people voicing their IMMENSE discomfort with existing on a platform where cub is explicitly allowed. creating exemptions with regards to this stuff really irks me- i don't understand how it's not in the interest of greatest harm reduction AND ease of moderation to ban it outright. i have other forums to talk to my friends and while it's annoying and would rather see this be promptly reversed, i have no issue leaving cohost over this decision

Please reconsider this. Cohost doesn’t need to be a place where people can post “18+ content depicting minors” regardless of caveats and CWs, or whether or not the minors depicted are furries. I’ll echo what a number of others have said upthread about this feeling like a betrayal; I would not have invested in having a presence here had I known this policy would exist, for the same reason I have no interest in spending time on Inkbunny.

(So, hey, on that note, considering that this is a substantial policy change sprung on users without warning or any kind of consultation process: if you don’t change it, I’d like a pro-rated refund on the remainder of the Cohost Plus year I paid for, in addition to already cancelling. What’s your policy on that?)

oh you're allowing cub art? so cohost is the cub art site now? so people can use animal people as stand-ins for children, the way furries use their fursonas as stand-ins for themselves? that's pretty disappointing and will probably make me stop using this website. i hope you arrive at a different conclusion sometime soon

I wish to echo other replies here expressing concern that this is going to lead to worse things, not better things. At such short notice, this very much feels like throwing a suitcase out on the street and telling a significant portion of your userbase to either suck it up or move on.

I very much think that if this policy goes ahead as is, without alteration, the site will very quickly become the social site that draws more CP artists in, creating an even bigger moderation nightmare for the site, and further alienating more of the userbase.

Please reconsider this.

i've sent an email to support, but i'll also let you know here that just by saying you allow cub, you've made this place feel a whole lot safer for me. i don't think i'll post that kind of art here, it'll just be on my website and inkbunny, but just by allowing it you have given me immense breathing room, to not have to worry some random stranger is going to accuse me, a CSA survivor, of being an abusive pedophile.

i've had a huge problem on twitter where people would come out of nowhere and give me their hot take due to the fact twitter created this culture where that's acceptable, and as much as i love fediverse, most instances also frown upon it to such a degree where a culture is forming in this exact same way. having an explicit rule that allows cub art will chase off the puritans and prudes, and make those who either don't care or are on the fence just, not bother people like me.

you're doing good work out there, it's a thankless job being staff for a social media website, but i have to say, thank you all so much. this is genuinely joyous to see, and i hope i can use this website, even if it means i'll have to learn a bit on how to use this place, since i'm more accustomed to microblogging.

my two cents: it's clear that cub/fictional minor/minor-adjacent sexual content is, at best, morally nebulous. when it comes to topics like these, for the purposes of setting out community rules/guidelines, i think it's less productive to ask "is this ok for us to allow on this site", since that discussion is virtually guaranteed to get bogged down in the quagmire of endless subjective discourse and debate. instead, i think it's better to take the consequentialist route, by asking "what good can come from permitting this content on this site". and honestly, i'm not coming up with many good answers to that. i do have some good answers to the inverse "what bad can come from permitting this content on this site" however, such as running the risk of allowing unscrupulous actors to feel comfortable on this site, and making the site less friendly/safe for minors, and people with related traumas - which going off the rest of the guidelines, definitely seems to be something that staff have decided they want to prevent.

given this, i can't say i understand the rationale for permitting sexualized depictions of minors anywhere here. it's entirely possible that there's other factors at play that i'm not considering, or that staff have information that changes the circumstances here that we don't know of. but in absence of both of those, i do have to remain skeptical of this decision. i really hope we can get some clarity on this one, particularly since (in an absolute nuclear - though highly, highly unlikely to me - worst case) the answer can affect my decision to remain on this site (and of others as well, going off other comments here).

EDIT: oh yeah the rest of the guidelines uhhh. honestly, can't fault anything else there. all feels rock solid to me. glad to see that (for the most part at least) the site continues to move in a pretty solid and reasonable direction. yall have done a damn good job of making a Reasonably Nice Webbed Site. thanks for that effort - here's hoping we can keep the momentum up!

EDIT 2: and now the Big Wall Of Text has been anwered. about what i expected. staff stay winning

EDIT 3: hmm. thinking about this comment - starting to realize i may have Posted Cringe. there's a (in hindsight, quite obvious) flaw in my reasoning here that kinda invalidates the concerns i had. might write up a longer post with some fresh thoughts on this at some point

Respectfully, I agree with the comments that having these carveouts do more harm than good. Whatever how much these types of content differs in terms of direct victimization there is still an indirect harm and discomfort of being around the people who do that.

At best "You can just block and ignore these specific kind of people" is something you should have hashed out upfront in describing an peaceful social media before even launching this website.

And not at best....As others said unless you've become THE only place co-existence within this topic even worth treating as an possibility.

So i hope you can back out of these carveouts.

Thank you for these rules, and for having a site that allows people to extremely easily blacklist terms they don't want to see.
I have seen websites start banning easily-blocked material, snowball into blocking more and more "uncomfortable" kinks, and eventually the entire site went down after removing too much of it's adult community.
No one wants that to happen to cohost, and I'd like to think everyone is mature enough to use the blacklisting tools available to them to meet that end.

edit: the ruling changed within hours, so I guess all the csa victims will have to take their coping art to the sites that host real csem. ok.
I hoped this site would be more neutral but I bet feral will be banned next.

thanks staff, sorry for the very angry people you'll have to deal with now

I think this is a really, really good update.

do not post anything encouraging, glorifying, or advocating sex between adults and minors.

hmm, ok. so would a post like this one i wrote a while back, where i talk about the value i find in age gap yuri fiction, be considered to be "encouraging, glorifying, or advocating sex between adults and minors"? i'm wondering because that section is worded annoyingly vaguely, and if the answer is yes then hmm that's not very good i don't think

or really, opening this can of worms in the first place doesn't sound good to me. like, is this... something that was actually starting to be enough of a problem that you guys had to come up with a stance on it? and uh, even if it was, the one you ended up settling on seems like it's just pissing everyone off lol

I strongly disagree with the policy toward cub porn, and I want to echo a lot of what the other strong opponents to the policy said. Use the reasonable person standard to resolve gray areas about whether a character is an adult, not the way you've proposed here. I've had nothing but praise for this site before and gladly paid for my cohost plus, but if this change goes through I would not feel comfortable continuing my subscription.

Please don't let Cohost become known as a haven for cub porn. It is not healthy for the community or the site in the long term.

just chiming in as politely as possible to say, i am cancelling my subscription, and leaving cohost as well if this goes unchanged, exclusively since cub stuff is now allowed. i'm very much a 'blacklist, silence, and move on' type person in every other regard, but this is the one thing i draw the line at.

"- do not post sexually explicit non-photorealistic visual art of fictional
humans (including characters that appear to be human) who are apparently
minors."

Just curious how this is going to work for something like aged-up content?

Ask for a friend who consumes a lot of Deltarune and The Owl House NSFW.

All in all, a pretty groovy update.

Good, honestly if this place became a place for people to post csam (fictional or otherwise) would have made me leave. But knowing this direction cohost wants to go in, I want to stay and keep being a part of the community. Let alone, I want the best for you, our moderators, so you don't have to see that kind of thing on a daily basis and potentially get hurt in various ways by having to do that to yourselves. Good on you!
I'd wish it be a stronger enforcement re nonhuman minors in art and human writing stuff, but I guess you can't have everything.
As others have said, I don't want cohost to go from "the cool tumblr fork that's filled with a lot of niche interests and hobbyists" to "the cub porn site" and I will leave if it even starts to feel like that.

I appreciate this post.

But, speaking as someone who has no in-depth knowledge at all about the arguments for and against allowing certain types of art (legally, morally, the effect it has on communities, etc.), and going off of many of the comments here, it seems like "hey, we're just telling you about this but it's going into effect in hours" might not have been the best idea?

Leaving aside discussion of any other angle - some users, like me, live in countries where visual art of fictional minors (including cub porn) may be illegal. If it's tagged via mandatory CWs, please consider geoblocking it in those countries.

seeing how FA has handled this recently and the problems that's caused (explicitly: how "I know it when I see it" human judgement is both a) probably the only reasonable way to handle things like this and b) much more ambiguous when it comes to furry art) makes this seem like a reasonable approach to me. sorry about websites

hey staff. not in love with the policy's implications but i do love you guys and i'd rather it be this way than whatever the fuck furaffinity's got goin on. my question is, wouldn't it be reasonable to create an exception to the exception for content along the lines of "i'm 12 and don't know what a penis is" "well it may be illegal but i am going to show you", to ban content that explicitly depicts grooming? i think this would apply to precious little but it would make a lot of people feel better if possible. i assume the rules also cover no discussion or romanticization of child grooming. (have not read the comments here, sorry lol)

I have 0 interest in using this website if its going to allow cub content.
Also where do you draw the line? If i put cat ears on a toddler is it suddenly OK to post with the right tags?

Why in the hell would you allow cub? That's a huge mistake, I... I dunno I have too much shit going on in my life right now to write my rationale out right now but please consider this a vote AGAINST that.

EDIT: The reason people hate the FurAffinity rule change is not because they banned cub in general but because specifically they're trying to create a heuristic based on proportions, which results in silly shit like Avali-shaped Avali getting banned despite looking nothing like human children because "x number of heads tall" or whatever. It is very simple to make an "I know it when I see it" rule. Situations where it's definitely cub and there could be no doubt in anyone's mind should just not be allowed.

I will be canceling my Plus subscription until the policy to allow sexual content depicting minors is corrected.

you should just drop any remaining pretense and rename the site cubhost so your stance is broadcast far and wide

I think is is reasonable to want to accommodate people in countries with more restrictive laws on personal expression while trying not to perpetuate the unintended casualties of censorship. Even sites intended to entice such content have similar rules for that reason, unfortunately. I can guess what group you are trying to prevent the site rules being used as a harassment tool against.

Of course it would be better if you simply allowed what was legal in the server hosting country (I'm assuming 'murica?) and left it up to people to police their own social media experience against whatever their pet peeves are. I'm sure you'll continue to get an earful from those of a reactoid mindset who thought that a general social media website was supposed to be their own private Mastodon instance clubhouse.

I've been using Cohost mostly lurking and just following other cool people, which is generally how I approach social media. With that in mind, I have to speak up. The decision to allow 'nonhuman' and 'fictional' minors depicted in a sexual way is utterly horrifying. Please staff, reconsider.

I appreciate the revision in response to feedback. I wish I understood why this had to be addressed through feedback from users. I am trying to maintain good faith but it feels like this site keeps trying to be as maximally permissive as possible about content sexualizing minors.

I don't understand why we can't have just a policy that bans material that sexualizes minors and leaves it at that rather than publicly relitigate this issue every few months.

To try and end on a positive note I'll say that it's at times like these that I appreciate the robust content filtering system that cohost has in place, and I fully intend to make good use of it in the coming days.

Seriously? Already caving to... mean comments of people obviously having no idea what CSAM is!?
Are we going down the FA road now as well? And then banning anything anyone could use as inspiration to do a bad thing?

You got it right for like an hour... 🙄

well, glad i didn't give you guys any money. i'm gonna find a community that doesn't equate hand-drawn lines on paper with my stepfather raping me as a child.

Good update, content of that nature shouldn't magically be 'ok' because it's anthropomorphic animals

does anybody in this comment section smoke weed

Clearly, most of the users on here are antis, so even if this absolutely fucking ridiculous decision that lumps fictional content in with actual real life children being harmed was overturned, I wouldn't want to use a site so clearly predominantly anti. So all things considered, this was an overall good thing you did. It brought all the people out of the woodwork and showed me what the userbase on this site is and thus I no longer desire to post here.

I will admit it feels a bit stupid to say this, like who fucking cares what I, a single user who has been on this site for like, a week tops, has to say on this subject or whether I stay or go... but hey! Everyone else is doing it, so why not me!

'Twas a fun week, at least.

so as i understand it, human child porn is banned, but pedobait cheesecake art of children isn’t, written child porn isn’t, and furry child porn isn’t.

this was all prefaced with “let's face it, there was no possible way we could make everyone happy here.” and i have a question:

the two conflicting interests here are pedophiles and normal people. why are you trying to strike a balance?

as i see it now you’ve basically allowed as much pedo material as you can without opening yourselves up to prosecution for hosting it.

This episode doesn't call for thoughts, feedback, and civility, it calls for what staff told me to do by e-mail after I mentioned many of us found the suicide baiting material extremely affecting: leaving.

I recommend a zero tolerance rule regarding pedophilia: people are trying to muddy the water by saying that a zero tolerance rule will be a slippery slope towards banning kink, and I can tell you it's not true

I raise a good example of an online space that has both a lot of kink and a zero-tolerance approach to pedophilia and that's Second Life. on Second Life every adult server worth its salt will have a 18+ only, no children, no child avatars rule. they don't elaborate or overthink it or make compromises.

despite this, second life is notorious for being filled with every fetish imaginable and being no-holds-barred on kink. there is no excuse. second life proves you can do it.

lastly, this line from the post:
we will not be using things like fan-wikis to verify age, nor will we be creating some kind of "ok/not ok" example list. we will judge the content based on appearance by the standards of a reasonable person.

this is the right approach. however, you just kind of did the quibbling ok/notok anyway by compromising on the rule w/r/t animal depictions and written content. I hope to come back to cohost corner in the coming days to see a zero tolerance rule now implemented so we can all put this sorry business behind us

Cool. I think that taking a 'common sense' approach instead of a legalistic one is shortsighted because this site will have an abusive or bigoted moderator at some point regardless of initial intent and when that happens a clear delineation of what is and is not 'moderator business' is the best defense marginalized communities will have (and also if this comment section proves anything it's that there's no such thing as common sense). But the clarification is appreciated, so thank you for sticking your necks out there. Okay, now I'm gonna go block a bunch of people.

Thank you for all of your hard work! You put SO much consideration into putting this together- thanks for doing your utmost to do right by people
May you only have to deal with a minimal amount of poorly-intentioned screechy i've-decided-to-interpret-everything-you-write-as-maximally-evil nonsense~

because of the compromised position on the matter, the whole site is now full of posts talking about the morality of loli/shota. I didn't come here for this

people have written a lot about how this makes the site unsafe, but I'll tell you it also makes the site extremely frustrating.

there'd be no argument if there were no loopholes and instead just a blanket ban. you can still claw it back and I will not complain, if you do, that the right decision has come too late. I would be thankful

you still have time to correct this and I hope you do

I understand that there are legal concerns (as well as considerations for payment processors’ sensibilities etc) that need to be taken into account, so there’s likely only so much wiggle room you have on certain aspects. Nevertheless, reading both the post and comments, I think there’s one thing that would do well to be revisited at some point, namely teenagers.

Several large fandoms feature coming-of-age dynamics, especially over the course of longer series. The success (lack thereof) of abstinence-only education makes it very clear that teens are… not very interested in celibacy, shall we say.

That you won’t go digging through fan wikis to verify exact ages of characters is a good start in this respect, but still feels rather… DADT. Like, I wouldn’t say most 17-year-olds appear significantly more minor-y than an 18-year-old; even moreso for non-photorealistic artwork with attendant stylization. Which puts things in an awkward spot where everybody in the room just… doesn’t mention a number.

I have no problem content warning for teens doing teen things in stories, and would do so regardless of whether it was required. I do appreciate that the mandatory warning is something as neutral as “underage,” rather than anything more loaded. (For instance, I’ve seen people arguing that Inkbunny should use “cub” as their mandatory tag for everything involving minors, and, like… no. That term is suggestive of much younger characters and attaching it to teens is awkward at best.)

So, yeah. Some degree of differentiation based on development (for fictional people - RPF is a different beast and I appreciate that you touched on that separately) would possibly be worth considering revisiting in the future. I’m sure it will stir things up if you do, but the flip side is that if the rule is based off the appearance of a character being a minor, the real change is arguably minimal.

(To be clear, in the interest of full disclosure: yes, I have sexually active teen OCs, some of whom I’ve had since I was in my mid-teens. I’m just interested in exploring their lives and telling their stories. It’s gotten increasingly difficult over time to find anywhere those stories will be welcome, and as I get older I find I have less patience for dealing with “this thing can be posted here but not there, this other thing can’t be posted here but CAN be posted there…” For once I’d like to find a place where I can just post my damn work.)

I personally find it troubling to see how many people think of this content in terms of “pedophilia.” That attitude fosters a very hostile environment.

I havent really bothered to say much because during the time, the ToS was still being developed but now there seems to be a pretty solid update I'll give my honest thoughts, mainly about the process (esp the quick correction about cub art now not being allowed)

Idk how to properly word it but I am really noticing how you guys seem to cater towards more one side despite trying to make everyone happy. You are doing your best, i see! And I appreciate that and your hard work. But yet that correction here is funny because this was a result of a lot of people getting mad at you and guilt tripping you for allowing one little thing for other people that they disagree with personally. I feel like that is a red flag if this is how ToS creation is going to work, where you're going to listen to the more loud majority more often and more easily than the minority, esp when the majority is threatening to strip their support from you if you "screw up" in their eyes.

These kinds of users are going to kill your platform if you don't at least try to gain some control in the ToS making process and just acknowledge that you are going to have to make them upset as well. If you want everyone to be able to be on here, you're going to have to acknowledge that they can't have everything, and people really do need to learn to curate their spaces and coexist with others without wanting random sites and mods to eradicate everything and everyone they don't like personally. Because this does often go down a slippery slope of other things such as noncon between fictional adults not being allowed because some people think consent must be visible in some way in other people's work.

I know this site needs support though. And I am just making educated assumptions from what I've seen in the past as this develops that this is mainly the result of needing stable support for the site. I understand that, but I'm not sure why even indie socmedia sites refuse to even consider the "other side" for once when they can provide just as much support for you as long as you give them the proper tools to safely coexist with other who may find their existence on this platform uncomfortable. See AO3 and OTW as examples. They aren't social media spaces, but they do allow everyone even the "nasty pedophile freaks" on their site, and they get tons of support every year to stay up and ad-free. And most of those people donating are the "other side" / "nasty pedophile freaks."

All of this is literally a matter of personal opinion on a type of art however. And many different users here (such as myself) will have varying different opinions about it. Whether you agree or disagree with this, it is no doubt that this debate about lolisho, cub, fictional underage work (and possibly soon, other transgressive work that doesn't involve fictional minors) isn't a black and white situation like people make it out to be. Everyone has a different opinion on it so the idea that it's "common sense" is not true, especially when people making this kind of "illegal repulsive" work are actually traumatized queer people expressing themselves and their sexuality surrounding this is usually the result of said trauma. These queer people can really help support your site if you allow them to express themselves a little bit as long as they put mandatory tags and filters on their work.

I do hope the ToS changes in the future, esp the process of it, and while community input is important, you gotta give the minority a chance and cater to them even if it upsets the majority. Because it seems like, from my point of view, they're not really going to be satisfied until you say all transgressive work is not allowed.

TL;DR: users here need to learn proper curation and respect among users creating work they personally disagree with sooner or alter, and that cannot be replaced with pushing, yelling, and threatening to revoke financial support if you do not do as they say and get rid of content (and maybe even certain users) off of a platform that's not even theirs in the first place. You cannot let users do this to you in regards to ToS rules, because like you said, you cannot make everyone happy and sometimes you gotta let these users down as well to make things as fair as possible. I do recommend looking at how AO3 and OTW does their stuff and how they stay afloat after all these years. We don't want a Furaffinity-like situation to happen the more folks demand more censorship on a site that's not their own in the first place

I hope you get what I'm trying to say here and I hope this doesn't come off in bad faith! I'm just trying to point out a major issue that I've noticed so far, and it seems like it has happened again as a result of users that may not be good for this platform if this is how they'll behave to you over one rule they do not like. This is your site, not theirs.

Weird that it would even need discussion; could just forbid all text and visual media in the vicinity of physical intimacy, of all ages and all species, and just be done with it.. would save tons on needing to bother reviewing and weighing whether it meets =)

I think it's short-sighted to ban loli/shota content on the basis of real world harm. But it is what it is. If nothing else, I understand that there is a cost to becoming known as "that kind of website".

no one i follow/nothing ive searched here has been nsfw, but these stricter guidelines seem healthy to a growing website. I see this is the subject of much debate, and I know I've been yelled at on twitter for in turn talking about censorship being ok in the term of child nudity.

I support what you do here, with other major social media sites going down the drain, this has been one bright spot.

As for written content, I'd like to say that it is treated the same as visual and audio content by Canadian laws. It does cause harm and I'm not sure what data you're using to show it doesn't. Regardless, thanks for banning cp